@Agulliver, exactly. Most people don't care, and security departments aren't likely to answer such questions in-depth for a variety of reasons.
As a traveler, there are two things to look out for (but usually you only know right before your stuff goes through the scanner):
1: The outward appearance of the scanner. An old-fashioned x-ray scanner will typically be a fairly thin-walled square box. The newer CT-scanners tend to have more a more streamlined design and if you look closely you can see that the housing can contain the torus-shaped CT device in the center. They tend to have more rounded corners or even have a semi-circular center section.
2: If the instructions to travelers still include that liquids and electronics devices (laptops etc) should be taken out of bags and passed separately through the scanner, then this is an indication that the older x-ray machines are used. Part of the reason why the newer CT scanners are used is that they do not require this separation of items since they are better able to reliably image the contents of luggage regardless of their physical makeup.
So in short: if you can leave everything inside your bags and the scanners look like they come from the iPad age, then you probably have CT scanner in front of you.
If you have to take your tablet, laptop and deodorant out of your bag and the scanner looks like something that was designed in the 1980s, it's probably an old-fashioned xray scanner.
As a traveler, there are two things to look out for (but usually you only know right before your stuff goes through the scanner):
1: The outward appearance of the scanner. An old-fashioned x-ray scanner will typically be a fairly thin-walled square box. The newer CT-scanners tend to have more a more streamlined design and if you look closely you can see that the housing can contain the torus-shaped CT device in the center. They tend to have more rounded corners or even have a semi-circular center section.
2: If the instructions to travelers still include that liquids and electronics devices (laptops etc) should be taken out of bags and passed separately through the scanner, then this is an indication that the older x-ray machines are used. Part of the reason why the newer CT scanners are used is that they do not require this separation of items since they are better able to reliably image the contents of luggage regardless of their physical makeup.
So in short: if you can leave everything inside your bags and the scanners look like they come from the iPad age, then you probably have CT scanner in front of you.
If you have to take your tablet, laptop and deodorant out of your bag and the scanner looks like something that was designed in the 1980s, it's probably an old-fashioned xray scanner.